Tag: weekly notes

February in monthly notes looks into what you should think about when using Facebook, suggests you to read “Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984)” by George Orwell and tells you 13 things you should give up if you want to be successful. Also it’s worth checking out Vue.js, use Git standup for daily Scrums and enhance your application accessibility.

Issue 16, 13.2.2017

JavaScript

Introduction to Vue.js
Vue.js is gaining traction more and more each week. If you need an introduction this post by Sarah Dranser is tops. (css-tricks.com) (from https://web-design-weekly.com/)

Tools

Git standup
What did I code yesterday? git standup looks crafty tool to remember what you’ve done and works with multiple repos.

Using tmux properly
You may know terminal multiplexers like Screen which was released 1987 but there’s also newer options like tmux (2007). It’s similar to Screen, but has some additional features and is easier to configure. The article tells you how to use tmux properly.

Software development

The Outrageous Cost of Skipping TDD & Code Reviews
Writing tests is one of the crucial parts of software development and the benefits of Test Driven Development has proven itself to be very useful to increase the quality of software. The article shows some numbers why you should do TDD and shares advice about how to implement a more productive quality process.

ARIA Examples
Some practical ARIA examples to enhance your application accessibility. And accessibility isn’t as easy as you thought like Soueidan explains with Accessible tooltips https://sarasoueidan.com/blog/accessible-tooltips/

Security

What should you think about when using Facebook?
Facebook collects data about you in hundreds of ways, across numerous channels. It’s very hard to opt out, but reading this article by Vicki Boykis on what they collect, you’ll learn to better understand the risks of the platform so you can choose to be more restrictive with your Facebook usage. (from WDRL #169)

Something different

George Orwell: 1984, pdf and audio
If you haven’t read “Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984)” by George Orwell yet, here’s your chance: The entire book is available for free as PDF and Audio versions. I personally recommend it to everyone who is only slightly interested in just one of these topics: social change, politics, technology. (from WDRL #169)

This time in monthly notes we cover design trends for interfaces, Apple steps up to iOS user interface templates game, learn Flexbox and Redux, something about microservices with Docker and see what GitHub has learned about CSP.

Building Efficient Dockerfiles – Node.js
Old but good to know. Many Dockerfiles are written inefficiently, especially if you’re using npm. You should use caching to improve the performance of your Docker container. tl;dr; add package.json to tmp before running npm install in there. (from WDRL 166)

Thinking in Redux (when all you’ve known is MVC)
Good explanation of Redux with React although the article uses it with React Native. Redux is quite simple in concept but you’ve to think differently how things work. Another option to Redux would be to use Mobx.

Something different

Finnish mountain biking expertise was awarded a couple of Design and Innovation Awards this year: Pole Evolink 140 and Huck Norris. The super long and slack Pole Evolink 140 bike throws up questions about geometry standards. And although not a new innovation with protecting your rims and tyres, the Huck Norris anti-pinch-flat insert is a plastic foam ring effectively protects your rims from dents and reduces the risk of burping. You can ride tubeless with an even lower tire pressure or even a lighter carcass, plus glean more grip.

Before opening the Christmas presents it’s time to check what’s in the monthly notes in December. This year there’s not much extra holidays so use them wisely :) Merry Christmas!

Issue 14, 23.12.2016

JavaScript

Angular 2 is terrible
I haven’t used Angular 2 enough to have strong opinions about it but looks like the Internet has. “Shaky Foundation, Not Invented Here, Premature Abstraction, HTML Minus, Unnecessary Verbosity, Poor Performance and Bloat, Putting the Java back in JavaScript, Terrible Documentation.” “Please for goodness sake don’t use Angular. For less than one-tenth of its size, Vue.js delivers a much better development experience.” (from Reddit)

5 Tips To Improve Your JS with ES6 – Crater Conf Talk
Virtual conference about ES6 features such as Arrow Functions, Object Literal Shorthand, Spread, Destructuring Assignment and Modules which helps you improve your JavaScript and browser code. You’ll see what it takes to run ES6 code today, and the tools you need to support the features you want in browsers that aren’t yet up to date. Slides

Building Microservices application on AWS
Good article summarizing the common characteristics of Microservices, the main challenges of building Microservices, and how to leverage AWS to overcome those challenges.

Security

SQL Injection Cheat Sheet
A detailed resource to find technical information about the many different variants of SQL injection vulnerabilities. A good reference for both seasoned penetration testers and those just getting started in web app security. (from DB Weekly 135)

Low-background steel
Did you know that after the first atomic bombs in the 1940s and 1950s the background radiation levels increased across the world and thus modern steel is contaminated with radionuclides because its production used atmospheric air. Low background steel is so called because it does not suffer from such nuclear contamination. This steel is used in devices that require the highest sensitivity for detecting radionuclides.

Late Autumn and rain has arrived to Finland and now we have good reason to stay at home and read about new ideas and what happens in technology.

Weekly notes, issue 12, 30.10.2016

Learning new things

Cyber Security Base with F‑Secure
Free and open course to learn about tools used to analyse flaws in software systems, necessary knowledge to build secure software systems, the skills needed to perform risk and threat analysis on existing systems and the relevant legislation within EU. It’s a course series by University of Helsinki in collaboration with F‑Secure Cyber Security Academy that focuses on building core knowledge and abilities related to the work of a cyber security professional.

Google Style Guides
Thinking about how to format your code? Luckily Google Style Guides has solved it for you. And with explanations like for Java.

Free programming books by O’Reilly
O’Reilly is known for their programming books and they’ve compiled the latest insights of what’s happening in the world of software engineering, architecture, and open source. Lot’s of topics regarding microservices from different aspects.

Open Guides: Amazon Web Services
“AWS’s own documentation is a great but sprawling resource few have time to read fully, and it doesn’t include anything but official facts, so omits experiences of engineers.” Open Guides: AWS is by and for engineers who use AWS. It aims to be a useful, living reference that consolidates links, tips, gotchas, and best practices. It arose from discussion and editing over beers by several engineers who have used AWS extensively.

Something different

Total Nightmare: USB-C and Thunderbolt 3
“Simple-looking port hides a world of complexity, and the (thankful) backward-compatibility uses different kinds of cables for different tasks. Shoppers have to be very careful to buy exactly the right cable for their devices!”

This time weekly notes provides pointers to last weeks JavaOne, teaches you to design better forms, tells about 171 words every programmer should understand and how to learn something about psychology which might help to understand yourself and maybe also users. And last but not least the documentary of last year’s Transcontinental 2015 tells a story of awesome cyclist who ride across Europe to Istanbul.

Weekly notes, issue 11, 27.9.2016

Development

JavaOne 2016: 85 recorded sessions
JavaOne was held las week and if you couldn’t attend it, like me, then you should have a look at the JavaOne 2016 Youtube playlist with 85 recorded sessions.

You need to be this tall to use [micro] services
Good hacker news comment on Microservices. “Thing is – these are all generally good engineering practices. But with monoliths, you can get away without having to do them. But with microservices, your average engineering standards have to be really high. Its not enough if you have good developers. You need great engineers.” (from @jaykreps)

Emoji from iOS beta 4
What does that emoji mean? Here’s a list of emoji as JSON, extracted from iOS 10 beta 4.

Keeping up with development

The 10 Best iOS Development Blogs
A list of the the ten best iOS development blogs in no particular order. If you’ve ventured to iOS development then most of these are propably familiar, like raywenderlich.com with great tutorials.

User experience is essential

Developer Experience Matters
“Developer Experience is one of the biggest key factors for developers to decide if they use certain technologies to use. Developer Experience (DX) is a type of User Experience (UX)!” (from @girlie_mac)

Curated list of online Psychology courses
It’s good to understand what drives and affects us and one way to do that is to learn something about Psychology. This curated list of online courses covers topics like Introduction to Psychology, Introduction To Social Psychology, The Psychology Of Persuasion, Psychology of Popularity, Positive Psychology, Logical and Critical Thinking, The Science of Stress Management and Introduction to Consumer Behavior. (from Userfocus Newsletter September 2016)

Something different

Transcontinental 2015: Race to Istanbul
The Transcontinental is a race like no other. On the 24th of July 2015, 172 riders arrived in Garaardsbergen, Belgium and raced to Istanbul, Turkey. Much like the early days of bicycle racing cyclist ride with no team cars or soigneurs to look after them. It is each for their own taking on Europe’s toughest terrain. The documentary follows the highs and lows of the race from the view of the Race Directors.

Summer has been relative nice this far even here in Finland and my short holiday is just couple of days away. But before that it’s time to check this years Java tools and technologies landscape report, get some useful plugins for Atom, start developing a React application with no configuration and read about the benefits of Serverless architecture. And while traveling it’s good to listen to podcasts for developers.

Weekly notes, issue 25.7.2016

JavaScript

Create Apps with No Configuration
Developing a React app has lots of things to setup so using Create React App, officially supported way to create single-page React application, as a boilerplate generator is good choice. And with single command, and all the build dependencies, configs, and scripts are moved right into your project so you’re not lock-in.

Tools of the trade

Java Tools and Technologies Landscape Report 2016
ZeroTurnaround has just released its Java Tools and Technologies Landscape Report 2016, which analyzes the data about the tools and technologies Java developers use. Good to note that the survey received just over 2000 responses.

Bash boilerplates
When hacking up Bash scripts, there are often things such as logging or command-line argument parsing that: You need every time, Come with a number of pitfalls you want to avoid, Keep you from your actual work. Here’s an attempt to bundle those things in a generalized way so that they are reusable as-is in most scripts.

Something different

Cheating at Pokemon Go with a Hackrf and GPS spoofing
Pokemon Go has taken the world with enthusiasm and it requires you to walk around and explore the city for Pokestops, Gyms and hatching eggs. But why do that if you can cheat? Since the game is GPS based with little tinkering you can spoof your GPS location using a HackRF software defined radio and simulate walking around.

Summer is here and mountain biking trails are calling but keeping up with what happens in the field never stops. This week Apple had their worldwide developers conference which filled up social media although didn’t present anything remarkable. In the other news there was good collection of slides for Java developers, ebook for DevOps and HyperDev looks interesting for quickly bang out JavaScript.

Weekly notes, issue 9, 17.6.2016

Java: stay updated, reactive and in the cloud

Java SE 8 best practices
Java 8 best practices by Stephen Colebourne’s is good read. The slides cover all the basic uses, such as lambdas, exceptions, streams and interfaces. (from the “13 Decks Java developers” post)

Continuous learning

DevOpsSec: Securing Software through Continuous Delivery
DevOpsSec free ebook is worth reading if you’re interested securing software through continuous delivery. Uses case studies from Etsy, Netflix, and the London Multi-Asset Exchange to illustrate the steps leading organizations have taken to secure their DevOps processes.

Tools of the trade

Introducing HyperDev
HyperDev looks to be an interesting new product at Fog Creek Software (known from e.g. Trello). It’s developer playground for building full-stack web-apps fast. “The fastest way to bang out JavaScript code on Node.js and get it running on the internet.” as Joel Spolsky describes it.

Something different

The Spring has been quite busy at work but Summer is just around the corner and that means either holidays or having some time to learn new things and see how things could be make better. My weekly notes has turned out to be monthly notes but that’s how things sometimes work out. But back to the issue which covers topics about continuous learning, best practices in development, looks into building blocks in Netflix’s stack and how to get started with ELK stack. And for the Summer project there’s Stanford’s Swift and iOS 9 course. Having done my iOS app with Swift it seems to be nice language.

Weekly notes, issue 8, 19.5.2016

Learning new things

Developing iOS 9 Apps With Swift from Stanford
Stanford iOS course is updated for Swift and iOS 9 and is good resource for learning iOS, Swift, or just to refresh yourself on best practices when developing for the platform. (Indie iOS focus weekly, issue 66)

Keep on learning and keep it simple

Being A Developer After 40
Software development is always changing which this article tells nicely and gives good advice for the young at heart how to reach the glorious age of 40 as a happy software developer. tl;dr; Forget the hype, Choose your galaxy wisely, Learn about software history, Keep on learning, Teach, Workplaces suck, Know your worth, Send the elevator down, LLVM, Follow your gut, APIs are king, Fight complexity,

jDays 2016: Java EE Microservices Platforms
A lot of people preach that you can’t build microservices with Java EE but Steve Millidge’s talk about Java EE Microservices Platforms tells us that Payara Micro and Wildfly Swarm are fast and have a small memory footprint and that it does not require any code changes to port the application from one to other. (from Java Web Weekly 18/16)

The Netflix Stack: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3
Microservices architecture in software development is what you should nowadays do but the question is how? The Netflix Stack article series covers some open source libraries you can use to build your architecture. Part 1 covers Eureka for service discovery and Part 2 is about Hystrix, latency and fault tolerance library. Part 3 is about creating rest clients for all of your services. The blog posts are an overview of what you can find in the accompanying repository.

SQL

10 SQL tricks that you didn’t think were possible
Lukas Eder tells you 10 SQL tricks that many of you might not have thought were possible. The article is a summary of his extremely fast-paced, ridiculously childish-humoured talk. “SQL is the original microservice”.

Something different

Dlexsiya
Interesting simulation with JavaScript how the web looks like to people with dyslexia. In the comments person with dyslexia tells that it’s easier to read when the text shifts. So, would dyslexia mode be good for website UX :) (from Weekend Reading)

Easter and couple of days of free time is good for taking a break from the routines or finally have some time to develop your personal pet projects. At least my Highkara news reader for iOS needs some UI tests for screenshots and maybe I get to finish my imgur app for tvOS. But before that here’s the weekly notes.

This week we get overview to OWASP projects, see how Stack Overflow is built, learn to design for the Apple TV and get to run WebLogic on Docker container. Finally we discover how Spotify Discover Weekly playlists work.

Why I Left Gulp and Grunt for npm Scripts
Cory House explains how Gulp and Grunt are unnecessary abstractions, whereas npm scripts are plenty powerful and often easier to live with. It’s easier to debug as there’s no extra layer of abstraction, there’s no dependence on plugin authors to update, original tool is better and clearer documented. (from Web Design Weekly #219)

iOS and tvOS development

An in-app debugging and exploration tool for iOS
Excellent tool for iOS developer which helps you for example to simulate 3D Touch in the Simulator. Also in Xcode 7.3 you can now simulate 3D Touch without external tools if your trackpad has Force Touch.

Designing for the Apple TV
Michael Flarup writes some tips for getting design right when working with the Apple TV. He covers all of the basics but also some interesting points like making sure you meet the expectations of a TV based platform in terms of displaying and taking advantage of video based content. (from iOS dev Weekly #239)

Enterprise Java

WebLogic on Docker Containers Series: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3
If you are using WebLogic as your application server, you should have a look at Bruno Borges series about running WebLogic on Docker. First post gets you started and shows how to create a basic Docker image with WebLogic and one with a configured WebLogic domain. The second post takes a more detailed look at the creation of the images, and the third one focusses on the domain configuration. (from Java Weekly 8/16)

This year has started slowly and weekly notes has frozen to monthly notes. This time they tell us i.a. how to put Spring Boot in Docker, useful features of Java EE 7, ponder what all there’s to do to launch your mobile app, read tips how to get better with Node.js and how smaller is better. And finally we have Yoga routine to keep our body in shape.

Issue 6, 2016-01-27

Java is strong with this one

New year’s Spring Boot tricks in a container
Read how you can combine Spring Boot’s hot restarting and running application in a Docker container. Of course you could just run Spring Boot from the IDE and expose the MongoDB container port for the application.

Nashorn: Run JavaScript on the JVM
Nashorn is a high-performance JavaScript runtime written in Java for the JVM. It allows developers to embed JavaScript code inside their Java applications and even use Java classes and methods from their JavaScript code. But why would you want to do that?

Getting better is good?

The Website Obesity Crisis
Keynote from Web Directions 2015: The Website Obesity Crisis. Beautiful websites come in all sizes and page weights but mostly-text sites are growing bigger with every passing year when there’s no reason for that. There’s also video.

How to Become a Better Node.js Developer in 2016
Tips and best practices not just for development but how to operate Node.js infrastructures, how you should do your day-to-day development and other useful pieces of advice. (from Twitter)
TL;DR; Use ES2015, follow callback conventions and async patterns, take care with error handling, use JavaScript standard style, follow the Twelve-Factor application rules, monitor your applications, use build system, update dependencies weekly and keep up.

Something different

15-minute yoga routine to enhance balance and agility
See how yoga can help you to enhance your balance and agility, including a 15-minute video that demonstrates these principles. This is targeted more for mountainbike riders than developers but better agility and balance doesn’t hurt anyone :)